Instructors with the Discovery Center teach their “Eco Voices” program to high school students at the Whittier Narrows Nature Center in South El Monte Thursday October 10, 2013. Controversies continue around the future San Gabriel River Discovery Center that is supposed to be built where the current buildings stand.

COMMERCE >> In a last ditch effort to stop the project, a group opposed to the building of a water museum and interpretive center at Whittier Narrows has taken its argument to the Central Basin Municipal Water District.

The district, a financial backer of the project, agreed to hear its concerns. It has scheduled dual presentations from groups on both sides of the issue on Nov. 25, when the full governing board meets and is expected to take a vote.

Central Basin is a major contributor to the San Gabriel River Discovery Center, having pledged $750,000 to the project back in 2008. About $200,000 has already been spent, sources said.

On Oct. 9, a two-member Administrative Committee agreed to put the group’s request on the governing board’s Nov. 25 agenda after hearing arguments for and against.

“Nobody seems to want this project,” Jim Odling told the committee. “It is in the interest of the Central Basin not to be a part of a project that is failing.”

Odling, leader of the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, began a new tack on a decade-long quest to stop this project from getting built on the grounds it is a waste of money, would be a shrine to water districts and politicians, and would destroy natural habitat in order to honor the natural habitat.

His request to the water district to stop funding the project comes nearly two years after his group settled its lawsuit with the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority joint powers board.

Odling’s group agreed to drop its lawsuit that claimed the project violated the California Environmental Quality Act. A judge ruled against the group in March 2011.

Mark Stanley, chief executive officer of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, the largest urban state conservancy, and the interim executive officer of the Discovery Center authority, said community groups, school districts and elected officials support the project.

The San Gabriel River Discovery Center will be 14,000 in square feet and will cost $22 million. The authority has about $9.85 million committed. In 2011 it hired a professional fundraising group to raise the remaining $12 million.

Stanley said additional money has been raised but would not say how much.

Losing a benefactor would be a blow to the project. However, Central Basin board member Bob Apodaca is also the president of the Discovery Center board. After the committee meeting, he said the money from Central Basin “was already paid” and didn’t see how it could be returned. He said the water district could consider a vote on future contributions.

Apodaca said the Authority should seek money from the Water Replenishment District, which he said has a $30 million reserve.

Central Basin, on the other hand, has financial problems. It has a net revenue operating loss of about $1 million, according to figures released in August. The district’s low water sales and ballooning legal costs are two reasons for the deficit.

The biggest change in the past two years was the start of an educational program held on the premises of the future Discovery Center every Thursday, since earlier this year. The site is adjacent to the Whittier Narrows Nature Center, across from South El Monte High School.

The circa 1940s nature center building is not adequate to hold the expansive science classes put on by the Hacienda Heights-based Youth Science Center. Also, the area cannot support school bus parking, he said.

Stanley said students learn hands-on about water, the Rio Hondo River, birds, amphibians and the water cycle.

The building will accommodate more students and include: outdoor classrooms, interpretive displays, and man-made bioswales and wetlands. Stanley said beginning the educational component is a way of moving the project forward.

He predicted the Authority will reverse its plans and begin building the outdoor classrooms and outside elements first, before the end of the fiscal year June 30, 2014. “Yes, there is a funding gap. But that doesn’t mean we cannot get started,” Stanley told the committee.

Odling said the Youth Science program is working fine without the $22 million building.

He said the building would be redundant, since the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach recently launched its “Our Watersheds: Pathway to the Pacific” exhibit. “Now the water districts are spending our money on a project that would directly compete with the aquarium,” Odling wrote in a prepared statement.

He also cited the failed Children’s Museum of Los Angeles, a $52 million unfinished building at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area in the San Fernando Valley that never opened. The museum board declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2008. The unused building was bought by the city of Los Angeles and may open in partnership with the Orange County group Discovery Science Center in May 2015.

“This is a good project,” said Hayden Sohm, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Department of Parks & Recreation, who attended the committee meeting. He called Odling’s information “biased and one-sided.”

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.

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